


Brotherly Chat

by Foreverwholockedme



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Gen, High Honor Arthur Morgan, John misses Arthur, Protective Arthur Morgan, Red Dead Redemption 2 Spoilers, we love and miss one arthur morgan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-17
Updated: 2019-05-17
Packaged: 2020-03-07 01:57:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18863416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Foreverwholockedme/pseuds/Foreverwholockedme
Summary: John pays Arthur a visit after he settles their score with Micah and Dutch. Turns out it was harder than John thought it was to see his brother again.





	Brotherly Chat

John was seated in front of his brother’s grave. He cleaned it first, it was getting a bit dirty. He hadn’t been to the site since Charles first showed him. It was just…it was too hard for him to sit there and come to terms with the fact that Arthur Morgan, his brother, and best friend was dead. That was months ago, in that time he found Micah and Dutch again. He thought that he owed it to Arthur to at least tell him about that. 

“Hello again, old friend.” 

He laughed but then he felt that knot in his throat and wondered if he could do this. 

“How…how you been? Hopefully you resting up. You always did have them bags under your eyes cause you wasn’t sleeping good.” 

A flash of Arthur’s eyes, faded blue, bloodshot, and lined with purple bags under them. Towards the end of his sickness he was always fatigued, but he never really got much rest because he was hacking up a lung at night and when he actually was asleep it was for no more than five or six hours a night, and those were good nights. John let out another shaky sigh. 

“I just wish you would respond. But you can’t…at least not like this. We be talking in my dreams though. Maybe that’s you visiting me? N-not like I believe in no God and all that, but Abigail been telling me that if it make me feel good then ain’t no harm in believing in it. I reckon she’s right.” 

The wind blew and John let the sound of it fill the silence. When it was dead quiet again then he supposed it was his turn to fill it, 

“You know, it makes me sad to think that no one never asked you if you was alright. We could all tell that you was in pain some days, that it hurt when you ate, hell when you breathed. We all saw the way you was losing weight…and your muscle started to go and Dutch thought you useless to him…we all heard you when you was having your coughing fits at night and left some times cause you didn’t want us to wake up.” 

He wasn’t even at the grave for longer than five minutes and he was already crying. But it had to be said. 

“You ain’t deserve that. You was…you was always there for us, even when you could barely walk up a hill no more. I remember that time Sadie asked you for that harmonica and you went searching for two weeks just to find her one. Or when you found that dime novel for Jack.” 

He sniffled. 

“You was a good uncle to that boy. Hell I’m glad Abigail ain’t see reason and marry you instead, lord knows you would have been a better daddy to that boy than I was, still am. And as much as I appreciated the extra help, I bet you with Issac and Eliza now. I bet you he’s happy to have his pa back.” 

Arthur cried the most John ever seen after he told him Issac died. Only Hosea, Dutch, and himself knew about him. But Arthur only ever told John how much he missed him. Likewise, John hasn’t told anyone but Arthur how much he missed  _him_. He took the journal out and placed on the ground in between them. 

“I wrote all about it in here, about how I miss you some days it hurts. I reckon Sadie thinks she miss you most of all, but it ain’t true. I miss you more. You,,, saved everyone Arthur…all them folk from the gang. We would not have made it out if it wasn’t for you. I just…I guess I wish you made it out with us too. You would love the ranch I built for Abigail and Jack, well you ain’t gonna love the part where they left me for a bit, but they back now. We got Charles, and Uncle too, he still uses that goddamn Lumbago excuse and it drives me near mad whenever I hear it. You used to especially hate it.” 

He laughed, but even that made his chest ache. 

“I ran into Dutch some time ago. It were all thanks to Sadie, she’s become…she’s become quite the force of nature. She fancy herself a bounty hunter but I reckon to them criminals she’s a nightmare. She been on Micah tail since everything went down, and she found him. She came and got me and we found them both up on a snowy mountain, Sadie almost died, one of the gang members got her with a knife while he was looking for Micah. They had a whole new gang, Arthur. It were like….it were like we ain’t even matter to Dutch in the end.” 

John allowed himself a few more tears at the thought of Dutch replacing every member in the gang with Micah of all people. John and Arthur both knew it was a mistake to let him join the gang all those years ago. Maybe they should’ve seen Dutch for what he was then for being the only one who wanted that psychopath in the gang. John thought that he could have prevented a lot of things if he weren’t so stupid. Maybe he could’ve convinced Arthur not to go to the Downes’ Farm. Maybe he should have gone instead. He wiped at his eyes again and continued his retelling. 

“They was together…hiding in some dirty shack at the peak of the mountain. You should’ve seen him Arthur, Dutch I mean. Micah still looked like spoiled shit under the summer sun and not even death could change that. But Dutch he…he looked so  _old_ and so skinny. His hair gone grey for the most part. He looked tired and angry and sad altogether. Still, he pointed his gun right at me and I thought that I was going to die right there. You was all I could hear, your voice telling me that revenge was an idiot’s game and that I should be with my family like you could not be. But Arthur I saw Micah and I…I…I thought of you. I thought of you here, half dead from TB but worst of all at the mercy of that asshole. Charles told me that your body ain’t have no bullet holes in it and I should have been relieved but instead it made me angry. Why, I was damn near spitting hot coals at that because, for some reason, knowing that you ain’t die from being shot made it hurt more. We was outlaws! It’s only right, only fair to us that we die just like all them that we killed over the years. But you died cause you was sick!” 

He felt the tears getting hot and his temper flaring at the thought again. 

“You was sick and instead of resting, you was trying to keep us all together, still trying to save Dutch and the gang even when they made your sickness worse cause you put them first. All of us. Sure, some of us saw reason and are making honest livings now, but Bill? I think I read about him robbing some bank a few weeks back. He ain’t change and he ain’t care about what you did for us, what you tried to do for him. If I was you I would have left, I would’ve gone far away to someplace dry and warm. If were to die from an illness such as that I would like to do so as peacefully as I am able. But you died saving me, and I don’t know if it were Micah that killed you or the Pinkertons, but you died alone Arthur. I hate to think of that…those moments before you…I can’t think of that.” 

John was worried that he wouldn’t be able to get his words out if he kept thinking about Arthur dying in this very spot eight years ago. Dying from his sickness alone and on a mountaintop instead of in a bed surrounded by his family like he deserved. He needed to hurry up and finish the story, it was getting dark soon. Arthur always loved the sunset. Slowly and carefully, John finished his narrative. 

“We were in a stand-off. Me, Dutch, and Micah. Micah got a hold of Sadie, only she and I made it to the cabin, Charles got shot on the way. He’s still alive, don’t worry. We all are. I told Dutch that we did our best for him, that he betrayed us, weren’t no betrayal on our end. I don’t know what made him do it, but he shot Micah and I finished him off. Dutch just walked away. I ain’t seen him since and I can’t say I much want to. Only person I want to see most is you…and I reckon I won’t for some time yet.” 

John was half tears and snot by the time he finished his piece. He kept staring at the headstone and all he could think about was how he helped Arthur most when his sickness got real bad. The nights he helped him to his bed when he was just too tired to get there on his own, the times where Arthur would cough so hard he threw up what little lunch he had. He cried softly to himself from the sheer pain of it all while John just rubbed his back. Besides himself, Charles and Sadie did their best to take care of him without making Arthur feel like he was weak. Dutch and Micah poked fun at him, made him feel bad for being sick. But he got sick trying to earn money for the gang, just like he died for them. 

“You know I was reading one day and, there’s this religion called Buddhism, I think it’s called, it’s from Asia. Anyhow, they believe in reincarnation and it’s when people are reborn, they come back for another life. It got a lot to do with how a person lived, if you was bad, you ain’t gonna like your next life and the same for being good…I know that you always thought you was the lowest of us all, but you…you was a good person, okay? You did bad things but that don’t mean that you had a bad heart. Living in the West when we was growing up…it was tough and we had to survive. Well congrats, Arthur, you did it. You–” 

He stifled a sob. 

“You survived. And I hope….I hope that in your next life you get to be born to a ma who won’t get sick and die, and to a pa that loves you and won’t touch a hair on your hand if it ain’t to tell you he’s proud. I hope that in your next life you’ll find another woman to love again and you’ll have your babies with her and grow old with them. You’d be making an honest living and you won’t ever have to suffer as bad as you did now…I hope that when that happens…I hope we meet again too.” 

The next handful of minutes involved him crying as he thought about all that’s happened to him, and how it was going to take a long while to move on from his brother’s death even though it’s been nearly a decade since he passed. When he thought himself composed enough to head home, he smiled and placed a hand on the wooden cross. He bent over and placed a quick kiss to the mound of dirt, patting it fondly and standing up after. 

“I’ll come back at the end of the week. Rest up now, you hear? I got stories, this is strange country we live in, brother!” 

He let silence settle in for the last time, as he mounted his horse, gave Arthur one last glance and then slowly made his way back home. 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sure how much John knows about Arthur's death, it's been a while since I played the epilogue (I don't think John knows that Micah specifically killed him) but anyway, here y'all go! 
> 
> Send me requests at my tumblr johnlockerooni!


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